Search America's historic newspaper pages from 1777-1963 or use the U.S. Newspaper Directory to find information about American newspapers published between 1690-present. Chronicling America is sponsored jointly by the National Endowment for the Humanities external link and the Library of Congress. Learn more
Image provided by: University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Library, Chapel Hill, NC
Newspaper Page Text
Cablwlied 1877. RALEIGH, N. C MARCH 2, 1915. VOL. C. NO. 67. rHOUSANDS OF HORSE POWER ON STATE'S LITTLE STREAMS Some of Them Have Already Been Hitched Up and Are Doing Jobs Almost Any Township In North Carolina Can Have Its Home Raised Power If It It STORY OF AMERICA TOLDJpiT Training School Students At GrenviNe Hold Exercises of Interest Special to Th ?wr obs-rf.. into if. The T- tin; :i:t., r.'V , jilOV Jl. HUTIiEK. 'f(ri, Feb 27. I dropped t, .r-ut market in Raeford today, and ,. v . v husM an innovation. In one o r --.vus an electric motor turning 'treat chopping machine. Over in printing office. Kditor Poole has . t . r.j,.,.tric motor running ms presses, i -,vn Is wired for electric power. evenu years n na iuiu ficuuu but recently power has come. vf. motors started a lot oi renec ,. (t is not Ions ago that this sec- L 1 t .... 1 ; , V. '.tl TRIVIA J 1 4. wo p;vcr irom kiw aui vd j ruler the steam boilers. With-n naif a dozen years eiectricity t come :m old story in North Car- rthelpss there are some to the old story, and every ;..niihing else breaks in to show .. -a hen? the road to progress is ., uvi I" deliver us. All over the y ,t- ;; towns and little towns are ,:iiK ieeuie light and power. Good n icJi. m-e in a while a stranger ;.. i'-i;s into this town and lie asks, ' ui -f - do you pet yoar electric eur si, ; .'Utliern Power or Buckhorn tiK." Then the citizen smiles and y,, "-.. ,,rf( following Brother Loop- ' v 'ii i.s of diversification." Mr. I.....;. t is the farm demonstrator, and i. r.-n.-untly talking of diversifiea- . ..fw li'-mc aioo" is the mark they put ii package of juice you get when i turn on ine iiui or iiie jjuwci I: oxford. And that is the new iiln that is suggested ty tins mo- r it. (lie meat shop The big water lovr3 of North Carolina are great !-..- for tho development of the ':it". but presently we are going to v '.'o that the little water powers to add a wonderful neip in maK Xvrth Carolina brilliant at night toy during the day. IJuildinj? a Plant. i .hi not certain how this thing be i , but the first I noticed of it was i. tidy Chandler's dam over on Lit-Uiv.-r where current was generated l htile darn for Southern Pines, tdu illy Chandler gathered up scv- 'n' i t-wns and built several little i'"- and small power plants until the light man of a big block of v':i. s.i nd hills country, and his plant Is tttaii:ed such a size that the big f. in electric lighting come from 'Us- j.laee and another every once in while, with a roll of money as big ' - a table lee and ask hirn if he wants '" !i ule, and Chandler grins and looks tne wad and says he wouldn't feel v homo if he didn't have somebody Peking about a wire that i3 down or ' !-bt that is out. and he better just o.t; or. to the thing a little until he -ad used to the thought of being '-'.thout it. J.it Utile dams on little streams and ; ti. plant, but he lights the towns -i -ui-.d here for miles. Then John Mvtjuoeii and some others put a ;l! plant in on the little stream at hik-iew. and they hung up some i-1 trie lights, and presently they went -''ii tht r and built a lugger dam over ;"!u Lobelia, and hooked on the Vass "tton mill. That is the way these hil- ihins work. They start out 'itli a few lights and then some other iks want to get on the line and an ihiT iitue tiam i3 built. Then that -ivfv, rnore power and a line is run a few more houses, and from that hue some more folks want current. .i ' H'i another site is hunted up for a ule dim. So presently the plant at elia had its wires in Raeford, and v " ii-t to see the thing shine. WtKMl Replaced bj' Jiiitv. Electric power is like crime. You Parted down hill and you increase ur speed every time you take an (h,r step. When the cotton mill hi this section to serve as a sort i e. -isolation prize for the departing umber mill power sat on the bench y the er.Kine and asked about fuel I he vavv ,flijj nia(je sawdust and slabs. ' cotton mill has no slab pile to 'arn. A wood bill for a cotton mill "i ine size is a painful thing if it i "Ho ved to become chronic. Cameron at Vass and Upchurch at Raeford had been saw mill men before they built cot -n mills, and they viewed with alarm the check book stubs that had "wood" marked on the line that says what for. Cameron got a strangle hold on Little River, and Up- church dropped several thousand dol lars in Rockfish creek. Then one day a man pulled down a big black handle on a shiny brass affair on the wall, and the engine at the Vass mill stop ped and a little shriek of a pulley and a whirr of belts and the mill was running with electric power from a little stream down in Hoke county. More recently Upchurch beat a path down from Raeford to Rockfish creek some miles below towrn, and Heins came up the path setting poles and stringing wires, and the first thing the folks knew around town the cotton mill was getting along with mighty little wood. Little river is a Jakey little stream that starts out from some springs a few miles above Lakeview. By the time one of the spring runs is three or four miles long it has been hooked up to run some little electric plant. Before it is big enough to de serve the name of Little river it is turning several wheels, and when any body tells yo.u that the mill will never turn with the water that is passed tell him that old things have passed away The mill at Vass turns with water that passed two or three nours or more ago. And after the water turns the wheels for one outfit it jumps risht into another job for another set. This Little river stream is develop ing several hundred horse-powrer. The big dam that Upchurcn lias built on Rockfish creek runs up toward the thousand mark The unsuspected power of the little streams of Hoke county is worth the attention of the whole State. It is only a little dis tance across the country to the Buck horn Falls development, or to the Blewitti Falls development and power wires from one of the big concerns :ross Moore county from one side to the other. But the ltle streams down this way serve the purposes, and it is not necessary to draw on the big power companies except for the sim ple convenience of it. We have awak ened to the fact that North Carolina has a lot of big electric power oppor tunities. We are just beginning to realize that for local uses the State has an abundance of little power op portunities that will provide what is needed for small industries ana ior small units of consumption, and that the little sources of power are suffi cient in the aggregate to make North Carolina a great electrical State even if the bitr Dowers were overlooked completely. Streams Duplicated Everywhere. The little streams that are available here in these counties have duplicates all over the State. A few of the lower counties are too flat for much fall, but with that exception North Carohna can provide thousands of horse-power on the little streams, and the limit of that power nobody can es timate yet. One of these days if you live long enough you are going to .ee a lot of these little streams hitched un. and thev will be doing all sorts of lobs. Out in the western mountain country thousands of miles of rail roads are equipping for electric haul age. Don't you imagine electric haul age is coming pretty soon in North Carolina where water-power is so abundant that almost any township in three-fourths of the State can have the future of electricity onna. mis . is tne wav. n -1 its home-raised power Don t you imagine before long all the little towns will be turning their meat grinders with electric motors? It is so much" cheaper to have running water furnish us power so that in .stead of turning the meat chopper by hand we can be doing something else while the motor is turning the chop ping "machine. Whether we incline to the electric power or not it is com ing:, iust a.s the seeing machine , and the mowing machine and all the other labor savers came. Tht-rp i in fit oTie -wav to forecast -M, . ' Car-out how much -power is develop' 'I the streams that are running dov o ward the sea. Include all the lu streams with all the big ones Remem ber that men have learned how to control and use this power, on the lit tle streams as well as on the big ones. Remember that men are extending the use of this power on all the. streams. needed for everything, for driving mills, for hauling locomotive trains on the railroads, tor dining automo biles, little machines in the homes, fans, irons, for everything that horses, engines and men supply power and vou will have one idea of what is to be driven presently by electric power, and you wrill have one idea of wiiat is to b driven presently by electric power. Then ngure once more tnat in the next few years a lot of new things are to be invented that will make use of electricity, and by that time you will be discovering that all the streams of the State, big and lit tle have the making of a might' busy spot from head to mouth. Will Build Bs Cities. Some day electric power is going to make a great town at several differ ent points in North Carolina. These will be at such places as the vicinity of Weldon, for instance. Already at the Roanoke Rapids that thing is foreshadowed. The first time I. ever say Weldon was something over enty years ago. I wandered out on the bridge viteie the Coast Line and the Seaboard together crossed the Roanoke and there stood and looked down on the vast volume of water fiowinsr down the river. Then the power available as showTn by the fall at the end of the canal beyond tne ation came up. It wras apparent .that the water that could be dropped from the canal to the river level was limi ted only by the amount that could be diverted at the head of the canal and arried down its length That seemed to represent thousands of horse powd er. Below the bridge vessels came up from tide water. Perhaps you never stopped to fisrure it out, but there are only a few- places where water power is avail able at a point where the xactory can discharge its waste water into a stream that is practically an ocean port. There are just a few such fa vored water power sites in the United States as Weldon. Richmond is muo'i like it. and I have often wondered why Richmond did not develop that power in the James and grow up to be a city of half a million people. Why does Weldon day after day overlook the enormous powrer that is right there in the town when it could make that little place a Holyoke or a Low ell? Above WTeldon is cf-r 80 feet of fall. At Holyoke is . fall of 6 6 feet. At Lowell is a fall of not half as mucn as at weiaon, yet xoweu makes several million yards of cloth a wreek with its water power, and manv other products. HoiyoKe is one of the bier manufacturing centers of New England with its water power. If you should set out to hunt a sec tion of country for a big development right from the ground up could you ni.k a more nromisiner site than right around Weldon. with its water trans wortation. its railroads running out in five directions, reaching the sea at Norfolk and the sounds at two or three points, connecting Richmond, the North, the South and the Wrest. with a climate that is ideal, a farm country that could not be better made to order raw material for the .factory on hand, and the entire world for what Durham calls its back country, thf rountrv in which to sell its goods. Some Power Producers. The Roanoke is not exactly a typi cal river of North Carolina, for in spite of the big power available in the neighborhood of Weldon the stream is a Virginia stream through most of its power territory, coming into North Carolina only a short dis- rccnville, Fb. r.7. The aum.ai historical pageant. Tk Washington's Birthday has become a feature of ex ceedingly reat interest. Four years ago one class of forty od students presented in tableau a few cnes from American nistory. This year 17 dents gave a connected series of sodes in twelve scenes covering years of American history. The sodes covered the periods of explora tions, colonial life, pioneer life. th when tlv stu-epi- 3'Mt pi- revolution and the period new republic was born. There were rive episodes in the pag eant. The first episode represented the explorations of the Spaniard as a seeker of gold, the Dutch as a trader and the French Jesuit as a mission ary. The first, .scene was De Soto'. meeting with the Indian princess. The (Continued on Page Two.) exchanging ut gifts between them re vealed the friendliness with which the Indians received the white people but, when gold was not found the treach ery of the Spanish when they captur ed the princess formed a marked con trast to the simple trustfulness of th -. Indians. The jolly Dutchmen giving the first "rire watei" to the Indians made a merry scene in the founding of Manhattan island, one of the lirst Dutch trading post in American. The third scene pictured Marquette as he voyaged down the Mississippi and por trayed the various types of Indians lu encountered. English colonial life was portrayed in the second episode. The practice of witch craft was vividly brought to the eye a.s "Goody Osborne," who was accused of witchcraft, was dragged oft to' meet her doom. The typical colo nial school, with its .stern teacher, dunce cap, and its amusing lesson on the salt box, was a striking incident of this period. The stately minuet da,need by eight couples presented a charming insight into the social life of this period. Tha fourth grade from the model school of the Training School d epict ed the pioneer episode by giving th"& story of Daniel Boone in several scenes: Daniel Boone and his brother as they caught their first glimpse of Kentucky; the preparation of the pio neer's three faced cabin: home-life at Boonesborough and the picket fence as a rort: an lnnian attacK upon Boonesborough and the catpure. of Daniel Boone; the Indian village in which Boone was held captive; Boone's home after Kentucky was thickly settled. The last episode marked the close of the first 300 years in American his tory and the beginning of a new epoch. The Federal convention at Philadelphia was selected as a fitting representative scene of the transition, it marked the birth of the new repub lic. The scenery and costumes used were enective out not expensive. in costumes showed the ingenuity of the girls. The ladies in the minuet wore silk petticoats with flowered kimonas draped in pannier style. The men wore bloomers and coats, with dainty bits of lace at neck and wrist; these to gether with their powdered hair trans formed the girls into attractive colo nial gentlemen. The girls in the first episode studied the pictures of the Spanish. Dutch and French of that period and modeled their costumes after these. The Spanish helmet, the broad b rimmed hat of the Dutchman and the black robes of the Jesuits ad ded much to the picturesqueness of the scenes. Cheese cloth fringe around dark middy suits, a few feath ers for the hair and a generous sup ply of paint for the face transformed the girls into Indians. Shrubbery" from the nearby woods made a picturesque background of open woods, for scenes. The fourth their own wigwams. ins and picket fence. The pageant was spectacular and presented the actual facts of history in such vivid and interesting pictures, that one witnessing it will never for get the scenes from history illustrated. the out-of-door grade boys built three faced cab- '; i 1 f if I. i I 1